Shona Illingworth: Lesions in the Landscape

Lesions in the Landscape by Danish-Scottish artist Shona Illingworth examines the complex individual and societal impact of amnesia, a condition in which the capacity to retrieve and form memory is lost and the past is effectively erased.

Through a major new three-screen video and multi-channel sound installation, and the accompanying project Amnesia Museum, Lesions reflects on the experience of Claire, a woman living with amnesia, drawing parallels with the depopulated island of St Kilda, a remote archipelago located west of the Outer Hebrides, Scotland, in the North Atlantic.

This powerful new work—the result of a collaboration with neuropsychologists working on amnesia—is presented in Sydney alongside two earlier works, exploring the psychology of memory and the relationship between our interior selves and the outside world. The Watch Man isa study of an elderly watch maker haunted by memories of his military service, and Walking on Letters looks closely at a prison inmate who has spent extended periods of time in prison – often in solitary confinement.

The project is the culmination of a partnership between UNSW’s National Institute for Experimental Arts, the UK’s Wellcome Trust and Foundation for Art and Creative Technology (FACT).

Illingworth is artist-in-residence at UNSW Art & Design.

Amnesia Museum Forum

The exhibition will be accompanied by an Amnesia Museum Forum, held in the UNSW Galleries, 2-5pm on 4 March. The Forum will address the relationship between imagination and memory loss, and the role of art in relation to both the scientific understanding and lived experience of memory.